Instructions on how to install a custom distro in WSL2 (Windows SubSystem for Linux 2)

wsl-install_another_distro.md

WSL install another distro

0. Here are some default vars for the process

ISO_DIR=~/fedora;
ROOTFS_MOUNT_DIR=/mnt/contents

DISTRO_LOCATION=

1. Install Ubuntu Bash

2. Install 7zip in ubuntu

sudo apt-get install p7zip 

3. Download the distro of your choice (i.e Fedora)

4. Move the ISO to its own folder, i.e ~/fedora

5. Navigate to the directory and Extract using 7Zip

mkdir $ISO_DIR; cd $ISO_DIR;
7z x Fedora-Cinnamon-Live-x86_64-31-1.9.iso

You should see the following files or similar

artman41@DESKTOP-TQGCI07:~/fedora$ ll | less
total 2139660
drwxr-xr-x  7 artman41 artman41       4096 Mar 31 16:04 ./
drwxr-xr-x 10 artman41 artman41       4096 Mar 31 16:03 ../
drwx------  3 artman41 artman41       4096 Oct 24 00:15 EFI/
-rwxr-xr-x  1 artman41 artman41 2203779072 Mar 31 16:03 Fedora-Cinnamon-Live-x86_64-31-1.9.iso*
drwx------  2 artman41 artman41       4096 Oct 24 00:15 LiveOS/
drwx------  2 artman41 artman41       4096 Mar 31 16:04 [BOOT]/
drwx------  3 artman41 artman41       4096 Oct 24 00:15 images/
drwx------  2 artman41 artman41       4096 Oct 24 00:15 isolinux/

6. Navigate to LiveOS (or where the squashfs is) and 'unsquash' the squash.img:

cd LiveOS;
sudo unsquashfs -d squashfs squashfs.img

7. Navigate to squashfs/LiveOS and mount the rootfs.img:

sudo mkdir $ROOTFS_MOUNT_DIR;
sudo mount -o loop squashfs/LiveOS/rootfs.img ROOTFS_MOUNT_DIR;

7. Navigate to $ROOTFS_MOUNT_DIR and tar.gz the files:

cd $ROOTFS_MOUNT_DIR;
sudo tar -zcvf $ISO_DIR/distro.tar.gz .

8. Navigate to $ISO_DIR and import the .tar.gz using wsl

cd $ISO_DIR
wsl.exe --import $DISTRO_NAME $DISTRO_LOCATION distro.tar.gz

9. Open your distro and create a user

wsl.exe -d $DISTRO_NAME
useradd -m $USER

Logging in to your account by default

Note: Don't forget to add yourself to visudo or you'll be unable to perform super-user actions until you set the DefaultUser field in regedit to 0

10. Get your uid

grep $USER /etc/passwd
# The return will be something like artman41:x:1000:1000:root:/root:/bin/bash
#  where the format is $USER:x:$USER_ID:$GROUP_ID:$GROUP:$HOME:$SHELL

11. Install Windows Terminal and Open the JSON Settings

#in powershell
notepad.exe $env:LocalAppData\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\profiles.json

12. Look for the profile with $DISTRO_NAME and note the GUID (referred to as $DISTRO_GUID in the guide)

• copying the GUID to defaultProfile will make you load in to your custom distro by default using the windows terminal

13. Open regedit and navigate to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Lxss\$DISTRO_GUID

14. Ensure the following values are set

Name	Type	Data
DefaultEnvironment	REG_MULTI_SZ	HOSTTYPE=x86_64 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games TERM=xterm-256color
DefaultUid	REG_DWORD	$USER_ID

15. Restart your custom distro shell

failed to setup loop device for squashfs/LiveOS/rootfs.img

failed to setup loop device for squashfs/LiveOS/rootfs.img

It worked this time. I used sudo mount -o loop rootfs.img ROOTFS_MOUNT_DIR; instead of sudo mount -o loop squashfs/LiveOS/rootfs.img $ROOTFS_MOUNT_DIR;.

Any example on what sort of files does the tar finally have? or the rootfs.img? I want to confirm if my custom ISO has these files renamed or just don't exist

7z x squashfs.img
added since 9.18